This invention relates to a treatment apparatus for coke oven door structures.
The sealing surfaces of coke oven doors and door jambs tend to become dirty in use due to condensation of coal tars and the like o the sealing surfaces thereof. If the condensed material is allowed to build up, it will eventually interfere with the door seal allowing coke oven gas to escape from the oven. Accordingly, it is common practice periodically to clean the sealing surfaces of the door structures.
Removal of the carbonized tars from the door sealing surfaces has in the past presented certain difficulties. For example, manual cleaning performed with a chisel cleaning tool can be inefficient and often damaging to a door seal. Semiautomatic mechanical cleaners which scrape or brush the door seal sealing surfaces are an improvement over manual cleaning but can also be damaging to the sealing surfaces. High pressure water jets or sprays have been found to effectively clean doors and reduce damage to the sealing surfaces but the design of effective spray equipment also presents certain difficulties.
Thus, for example, although coke oven doors and door jambs are generally rectangular in shape, they commonly have sealing structures with rounded corners. Thus, simple rectangular motion, for example, of a spray cleaning head or the like around the periphery of a door structure would not effectively clean the rounded corners. In order to move a cleaning head around the corners of a door structure as well as vertically and horizontally along the respective door edges, known spray-cleaning machines have, for example, incorporated a massive frame shaped to conform to the shape of a door and around which a spray head is moved during a spray cleaning operation. Other known door cleaning proposals have likewise involved complex equipment for enabling cleaning heads to conform to a door profile.